In a new guest column for The Hollywood Reporter, Nine Inch Nails leader Trent Reznor has some very nice things to say about David Bowie, his old tourmate and collaborator, and about Bowie’s unexpected 2013 comeback album The Next Day: “I’m still unraveling the riddle that he presented. I’m still getting new meanings out of the lyrics. What I thought was conservative production now feels forward-thinking. Like any great album, it’s revealed itself to be something that wasn’t what I initially thought.”

But it’s not all love with Reznor. By way of praising Bowie’s decision to drop the album with minimal advance hype, he snarks a bit on Arcade Fire, his competition on the festival-headliner circuit. Here’s how he puts it: “The marketing, too, felt like a breath of fresh air. It wasn’t like the Arcade Fire album [Reflektor] and its yearlong rollout, where it was like, ‘OK, I get it. You’ve got an album out, you’ve played every TV show in the world.'”

Incidentally, the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne is not a big Reflektor fan, either. He tells Rolling Stone:

I think Arcade Fire connecting up with James Murphy felt like two [artists] getting together and saying, “Let’s make something important.” I don’t really listen to the Arcade Fire on purpose. It’s just not my trip. I’m not really looking for that kind of, “We’re gonna survive” kind of music.

Of course, this does not come as a surprise.